I thought my nose was running; it was bleeding.

I wiped it absently and made a rusty smear on finger, nose, and upper lip.

Breathing through my mouth a little like a pig or a little kid.

Someone impatient or unschooled, which I am kinda.

Someone who wants to make sense and be made sense of.

Someone who sees an Alma Thomas circle or Mark Rothko block of color and who feels it ministering to my heart through my eyes.

Why is that? Who made that. Why does my blood pressure lower when I see the fruit of your brush and the little imperfection in your stroke.

Pane of red, pane of blue pane of black broken by crimson, each one makes you feel something different.

I sit on a green bench on the golf course and look toward the sun and thank you.

For pain for it reminds me that I am alive and that I have a body for which to be thankful.

My bendy fingers which I bend in succession to remember.

I’m a stop-motion man come alive in self-regard.

My sense of hearing which hears a truck gunning its engine, a little fortress to roll loud and high down the road.

My eyes which squint so they don’t see the sun.

I’m out of order. I’m neurons neutrons synapses, thought memory desire regret firing automatically.

Breathe the breath of you in me.

Order feels rote. I want chaos. Pollock. Punk. Jazz. Numbess, absence, disarray.

But there’s always order, seeping through, looking to settle everything.

In the beginning was the word. Logos. Order I guess.

In AA you admit that your life has become unmanageable. Yes it has and so it remains.

I don’t manage, I am managed.

So yeah I’m sitting on a green bench. I’ve got the same rote pain the same rote trees. the same rote steps to take, things to do people to see.

I know that if I get up and move my body, get the blood moving, something will catch fire in me, maybe send something coursing through,

Something new.

Causing my brush to move. I’m part, I’m parcel.

Ok I’m getting up.

Like Gumby or Davey or Gromit. Jerky movements of clay the Animator used,

Made smooth.

Somewhere between schadenfreude and hoping he does great is me,

remembering how much you loved him. Clutched your breast and then threw your hands out, exulting in the sound of his voice.

his sounds, what he said.

Oh you loved him.

You loved me too, though.

You wanted me to hear, see, the beauty you felt.

We went out on a cold cold night.

We looked at city all laid out. All laid out like stars, or.

A tapestry of light. A tapestry of lights. way way way down.

and it was cold. Do you know how cold? Real cold.

I bought some Korean military boots that were too thin and didn’t fit and clomped around, all around the walkable city with you tearing up my feet.

We lived close and I came over, or you did. But usually I did, because you made your house a home.

We drank wine.

I was drunk, or you were, I can’t remember, and I was trying to keep you from getting my keys, because I was too drunk to drive, or because you wanted me to stay, but you weren’t successful and I, dumbass,

drove away.

You made shrines. Shrines to beautiful things you loved, and you worshipped at them

Me, good, Christian, didn’t approve, but it was only an expression of

Your desire to worship and give thanks. I could see vestigial Catholicism in your shrines.

You made a shrine to me. But not to me to my music, but not even my music but the duo I was in. The music I made in partnership.

And you weren’t worshipping me or us but giving thanks to God for all the things you loved which included the music I made, and.

Me.

you had a poem published and I was so proud, excited.

You found a man, a math genius from M.I.T.

He went to Vegas with a team and counted cards, I think. Or maybe that’s illegal. If so then he didn’t do that.

You were smitten.

We lost touch.

You came to see me in a house full of people, and brought your son, “to see if I was still at it.”

I was glad to see you, and am glad to remember you and when I hear “Silvertown” by the Push Stars it cuts me and the feeling is the same

And I remember you exulting in the Push Stars, and Chris Trapper.

I remember you exulting in everything.

And so now I will build a shrine in my heart and worship God and hope hope hope.

She floods the world with oneness and warmth and friendship and love and little lights all laid out below us.

the whole silver city for us to see.

a silver world to be in.